The last time Raspberry had hit the headlines was when it had unveiled the Raspberry Pi Zero a $5-chip that came with medium specced hardware. This time around, the company has unveiled the Raspberry Pi 3 and it comes baked with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 64-bit processor and still manages to keep the price at $35.

The credit sized computer is now well equipped and unlike the previous versions where one had to plug in the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth via the USB adapters, the Raspberry Pi 3 comes with built in hardware. Even though the Raspberry Pi will run on a 64-bit processor, it will still continue to support the 32-bit operating systems and that too at a faster rate.

Raspberry Pi 3 has upgraded from the 32-bit Broadcom SoC with 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex A7 SoC in its predecessor to the 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 which is clocked at a higher 1.2GHz. Overall the company claims that the Raspberry Pi 3 will be 50% faster than the Raspberry Pi 2. The silver lining comes in the form of a 64-bit processing unit which will now support ARMv8 instruction set and can make both the 32-bit and the 64-bit operations faster.

On the RAM front, the Pi 3 has retained the 1GB RAM and it also comes with a Broadcom 400MHz Videocore IV graphics which is an obvious improvisation as opposed to the 250MHz version in the Pi 2. The end result of the graphics upgrade is 1080p support at 60fps whilst using the H.264 decoding format and also extending support for 30fps. The Ethernet connectivity is left untouched at 100Mbps.

The new set of upgrades will make the Raspberry Pi a more accomplished PC alternative and it can also be used to power Wi-Fi devices. Considering the rapid pace at which things are progressing in IoT arena, it will make sense for manufacturers to use the Pi 3 in devices that would be requiring a mid-range computing prowess.

Mahit Huilgol Senior Author Mahit Huilgol is a Mechanical Engineering graduate and is a Technology and Automobile aficionado. He ditched the Corporate boardroom wars in the favor for technology battle ground. Also a foodie by heart and loves both the edible chips and the non-edible silicon chips.